mbassoc2003 wrote:You can have as many negative feedbacks as you like in previous years, because your feedback is only taken over a 12 month period. You can also have as many neutral feedbacks and removed negatives as you like because they are also not counted. Basicly, you have to be deliberately trying to steel from people to get hurt by the system. Being an a55hole or a liar isn't an offence under eBay's system so long as they get their fees.

Bad DSR ratings are what kill you nowadays, not the feedback itself.

Mike B.

1st print DMG for cheap BIN, cover has obvious wear. but if you're looking for the early print, $10 is hard to beat

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Badmike wrote:
Bad DSR ratings are what kill you nowadays, not the feedback itself.

Mike B.

Yeah, but that only really affects you if you are a business seller. For the casual seller (like the majority of eBay members), that doesn't really make a huge difference. Truth be told, I never look at the DSRs for sellers.

I still cannot classify a seller as shady for a couple of negatives (in this case, from the same guy, who could be nuts) and 12 months of positives. If that's the case, then the system doesn't work at all!

Maybe that's the point...

Hector.

Badmike wrote:
Let me correct you on one thing Ian, volume sellers are affected less by bad DSRs because it is connected to a percentage of your sales. For example, a friend of my wife's just got put on suspension because she received her 10th low DSR in a year, she only has under 500 sales in a year, which is under their threshold of 2 percent.  I can bet you anything Troll and Toad has that many bad DSR ratings a week and it does nothing to impact their sales.  So actually, it's the smaller seller that is inordinately affected by a low DSR score rather than a high volume seller.  This btw is part of Ebay's plan to eventually eliminate most smaller mom and pop sellers from their site by making it nearly impossible to function to recover from even one or two legitimately bad sales (or bad buyers that leave low DSRs for spite).  All Troll & Toad and Coug are doing "right" is listing hundreds and hundreds of sales, which causes negative feedback and low DSRs to have little effect.

Mike B.

This is actually very astute, Mike. If you sell a couple hundred items a year and you get a few low scores, you are in big trouble quick. This really would not be a big deal but I have noticed that seller expectations are getting crazy. Everything has to ship for free and it better be there the next day. I now sell very little because of time and the eBay hassle. When I do, it goes priority mail with tracking (which still does not seem to be any protection). All it takes is one asshole who buys a few items to be a jerk and you are suspended. It has to be bay's plan to dump the little guy.

bbarsh wrote:
This is actually very astute, Mike. If you sell a couple hundred items a year and you get a few low scores, you are in big trouble quick. This really would not be a big deal but I have noticed that seller expectations are getting crazy. Everything has to ship for free and it better be there the next day. I now sell very little because of time and the eBay hassle. When I do, it goes priority mail with tracking (which still does not seem to be any protection). All it takes is one asshole who buys a few items to be a jerk and you are suspended. It has to be bay's plan to dump the little guy.

BTW this isn't conspiracy theory, Donawhore has stated on more than one occasion he wants to move away from the "garage sale" model and to a more sophisticated "Amazon" model that just happens to also include auctions.  To alleviate bad pub they have made this move in small stages over the last couple of years, all of which are geared to reward large volume sellers and punish low volume sellers.  The latest this summer will be to charge sellers FVF for shipping prices (thus rewarding larger sellers who can afford to use free shipping because it doesn't impact their bottom line as much), and to raise the amount of sales you must make from $3000 every three months to $12,000 every three months to receive a monthly 5% discount (thus, no discounts for many steady sellers starting in July).  They are also gradually phasing out auctions and moving to a "Set Price" model to be more like Amazon....can't really fault them much on that one, as their auction sales revenue has been flat for years.

I don't think most buyers realize that very soon they will go from, say, a dozen people regularly selling D&D items on Ebay to a couple (Troll and Toad will be one), and these couple will be able to charge pretty much what they want.  You'll have a guy every once in awhile selling a big D&D lot but there will be no guarantee of condition, shipping quality, or accuracy.

Mike B.

mbassoc2003 wrote:Either way, they have an absolute monopoly, and they can do as they wish. There is no viable alternative, and no viable alternative has emerged in the past decade. That pretty much says it all.

Yes, there will be classified and little fan sites, but there is no secure auction site or even a secure sales channel that doesn't make it easy for buyers to steal from sellers. After all, Amazon is the biggest free book shop on the planet. You want a copy of something and you have no mmrals, you can order it from Amazon and claim a refund. Amazon will refund you, no questions asked, and the seller is told to go f"ck themselves.

Atleast with eBay, you get a fairly honest service, you can judge fairly accurately how honest or dishonest the seller is, and both the seller and the buyer have a fair chance during a dispute. eBay is a good sales channel because the buyers and sellers trust eachother. No other sales channel has managed to establish both the foot traffic and the trust and place them together in one place.

As time goes on, those selling collecting RPG items should start using RPG Marketplace more.  It's basically like it was in the old days before Ebay, with buyer and seller contacting each other and striking a deal.  It's probably as effective for directed sales as Ebay is, since the uber-collector community buys probably 75% of the rares anyway. But understand by "directed sales" it means the seller is doing all the work of telling people his wares on RPG Marketplace. Since Ebay handles all that we have been trained to sit back and let someone else do all the work.  I do think Ebay will get so ridiculous at some point that RPG Marketplace should see more and more business, particularly with oddball or unique items. I sold 20 Jim Holloway print sets in a week on RPG Marketplace, while the same print has sat on Ebay for the last year with only 2-3 buy outs.

Mike B.

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A full run of Dragaonlance for those who collect them.



NOTE: Some are not complete with copies instead of original parts.

TheHistorian wrote:Never use it.  Search doesn't work right.  Generally, prices are such that I may as well buy from NKG, T&T, etc.

That stuff on RPGMP will normally sell itself for collectors looking for whatever item is listed there and yes, often the listed price for some items is higher at RPGMP than for the same items on e-Bay or at NKG....

BUT I have yet to purchase a single item from RPGMP that was NOT succesfully negotiated down to an overall lower price from the prices listed.
Most times that negotiation resulted in me buying more items from the seller than I had at first intended.
T&T and NKG wont negotiate... or at least I ever have been able to get them to.
And except for BadMike (Whom I live very close to) I dont recall ever being able to negotiate succesfully on e-Bay at all (Other than the "Make an Offer" listings).

And I have never had any trouble finding stuff on RPGMP either.
Have no idea what you meant by the search not working for you.

I find it interesting that so many sellers will post pictures (on e-Bay) so that the viewer must grab the computer screen, pick it up,  then set it on its side to properly view what they are selling...
ANY camera software (even the windows regular photo viewing software) will allow you to rotate your photo in 90 degree increments.

One would think that an $800 piece of artwork should be viewed top side up...
Unless of course I am WAY off base and that one IS top side up...